The Wanderers

I was delightfully surprised with this film. I wasn't sure what I was expecting, but I watched it after it was mentioned by "The Warriors" director Walter Hill because he had some worries that his film and The Wanderers would be coming into theaters around the same time, and he described them as two street-gang movies competing for box office sales. As much as the seniors in this movie had a "gang," the two movies were far different from each other, I feel.

The Wanderers is a strange movie. At moments, intensely serious fighting and interpersonal problems exist amongst these teens in the community, and then in other scenes, the moments couldn't have been lighter (ie. Playing strip poker with a couple of the girls at a party). It reminded me more of "Porky's" and the relationships between characters in that film. The cast was an excellent ensemble, and even though most of them went on to other acting work, I'm surprised I haven't seen them in more roles.

Watching the movie now is a little difficult due to political correctness and the way the movie tried to cut the racial tension with a knife. The movie has real guts by laying it out there for the audience to get uncomfortable by. The truly surreal moments involve a whole different gang that shows up a few different times during the movie; they don't seem to resemble a different neighborhood and its residents but more like zombies, and it was very difficult to take them seriously without understanding their true intentions and characters. In contrast, I really enjoyed The Baldies, the neighborhood skinhead gang that didn't seem to take life too seriously, which differentiates itself between the skinhead stereotype of white supremacists which most skinheads get labeled as.

Overall, I really want to buy this movie after watching it. It reminds me of a movie that tried to get remade in the same style, "Dueces Wild." The characters were playful yet had real problems. The music is classic 60's tunes from the era, with a handful of originally scored pieces for the surreal fighting scenes. I feel that its good enough for a few more watches, but there are some odd choices for included scenes that I didn't feel fit the movie too well. Definitely check it out if you like gang movies like The Outsiders or The Warriors.

Interestingly enough, most of the gangs portrayed in the film were neither symbolic nor imaginary, but were based on various real gangs who existed at different periods throughout the fifties and early sixties.

Many of these gangs were not real gangs in the common theatrical sense, but were specific ethnic groups of teens from different Bronx and Manhattan neighborhoods. Of course, each group developed its own mythical idea of what the other groups were like, and in his novel, Richard Price used much of this teenage myth and lore.

Of all the well-embellished epics common to the teens in the Wanderers' neighborhood , those dealing with the Duckies were the most detailed and commonly accepted. The Duckies, whether or not they were truly an organized group with such a name, were "the guys across the tracks", insofar as The Wanderers were concerned (the tracks being the NY Central's Harlem Line). They lived in the predominantly Irish neighborhood directly across Bronx Park. I believe their frightening, near demonic quality in the movie was based on a single actual event when two of the Wanderers were actually attacked in the park. Since The Wanderers had never really engaged in any real "gang wars" (or any significant fighting for that matter), that particular episode was the source of most of their perceptions of the Duckie Boys' penchant for unbridled violence.

The Wanderers, an Italian street gang in the Bronx 1963, preparing for a rumble with rival gang the Del-Bombers, try to enlist other gangs to help their cause. However, as the times are a changing, The Wanderers and all the other gangs of the city must come to terms with pending adulthood, and, the ending of an era.

Directed by Phillip Kaufman, this adaptation of Richard Price's novel stands up as one of the best pictures to deal with gang culture. Laced with crackling adolescent humour, and sublimely sound tracked, The Wanderers triumphs better than most because it captures the time frame perfectly. Encompassing the killing of JFK, and subtly showing (during an hilarious sequence) the enlisting of ignorant youths into the Marines, to be carted off to Vietnam no doubt, The Wanderers has far more to offer than merely angst and high school jinx. The cast are surprisingly strong, Ken Wahl, Karen Allen, Tony Ganios and Erland van Lidth all shine in their respective roles, whilst Kaufman directs with a knowing sense of purpose of the thematics to hand. All of which culminates in a quite eerie final third as the deadly Ducky Boys enter the fray. Not quite as serious as The Warriors, which was released the same year, it's a film that much like this one now feels part of my teen education. The Wanderers is however the smarter picture of the two in terms of substance. The coming together at the finale, the racial harmony bursting out from the screen, is and always should be eternally embraced.

All together now, "I'm the type of guy who will never settle down" 8/10

This film made a BIG impression on me when I was growing up. More than any other film, it captured the timelessness of the transition from being a boy to becomming a man and how you leave childish things behind. Funny, raucous and, at times, both disturbing and moving,this film has it all. If you've never seen "The Wanderers", please do yourself a favour- you won't regret it.

One of the greatest scenes ever put on film is in this movie: Ken Wahl, about to get married, facing the transition between youth and responsibility, peers through a window at the action at Gerdes' Folk City in Greenwich Village, where, he dimly senses, there's a whole new world beyond his comprehension...it's pure gold, like most everything in this movie. I don't recall rock'n'roll songs ever being put to better or more appropriate use in a sound track. I don't recall a movie ever shifting more seamlessly, effortlessly, from gritty naturalism to bizarro impressionism and back. The cast is great! Whatever happened to some of these actors? There really was a Fordham Baldies, and I grew up not far from the old Alexander's in the Bronx, so I can't pretend to objectivity. For me, this is rather like a New York version of American Graffiti; it creates a world that I feel at home in, even if I never was a gang member and we left the Bronx when I was eight. By the way, the adaptation from Richard Price's book is, I think, remarkable. The book is a series of thematically linked stories that become a single organic story in the film. And I can't blame Ken Wahl--or his character--from being besotted by Karen Allen. Personally, I'd have gone right into Gerdes and flung myself at her feet. Oh yeah, the late Dolph Sweet is superb here.